The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2024–2025
ProMate turns used notebooks into learning tools for Sri Lanka's blind students
As Sri Lanka's crisis priced paper out of reach, ProMate collected used notebooks — 101,300+, enough for every blind student in state schools.
ProMate · Ogilvy Sri Lanka
What it had to solve
Sri Lanka's economic crisis made paper and school supplies unaffordable, and blind students in government schools were left without notebooks. ProMate, a stationery brand, could not lower prices, so it questioned the assumption behind the shortage: for a blind student, a used notebook is as good as new.
How it works
Sri Lanka's economic crisis pushed paper and school supplies out of reach for most families, and blind students in government schools were hit hardest — no paper meant no writing practice and no way to take notes. ProMate, a stationery brand, could not lower the price of paper, so it looked for a different answer: what actually made a notebook unusable?
The insight was that 'used' is a sighted person's judgment. For a blind student, the ink marks of a previous owner are invisible, and the pages that remain blank are still perfectly usable — a used notebook is as good as new. With a near-zero budget, Ogilvy Sri Lanka launched a nationwide drive collecting notebooks that sighted students had finished with and turning them into learning material for blind students.
The response overwhelmed expectations: more than 101,300 notebooks were collected, exceeding the annual needs of every blind student in Sri Lankan government schools, and the surplus was set aside for students in Pakistan, Libya and South Africa. The work entered the D&AD awards archive under Experiential: Activation & Participation.
Why it lands
- It reframed the product: 'used' described the previous owner's experience, not the next user's — once that assumption was dropped, waste became supply.
- The numbers gave the campaign its shape: a country's worth of half-used notebooks is huge, while the group that needs them is small, concrete and easy to name.
- A near-zero budget forced participation to be the media: schools and families had to hand over notebooks, making donors part of the outcome rather than viewers of an ad.
- The target was checkable — every blind student in government schools — so the over-delivery of 101,300+ notebooks made the result undeniable.
What it did
More than 101,300 notebooks were collected — exceeding the annual needs of all blind students in Sri Lankan government schools. The surplus was earmarked for students in Pakistan, Libya and South Africa, and the work entered the D&AD awards archive under Experiential: Activation & Participation.
What you can take
When crisis prices your product out of reach, ask who needs it 'new': if the flaw that makes it 'used' is invisible to them, everyone else's waste is their supply — and collecting it is the campaign.
Since then
The collection exceeded its goal so far that ProMate planned to donate the surplus to students in Pakistan, Libya and South Africa, extending the idea beyond the crisis that created it. The work was later collected in the D&AD awards archive under Experiential: Activation & Participation, where it remained documented as a near-zero-budget national activation.
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